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“I’m a fighter, not a quitter!”

Liz Truss quoting Peter Mandelson during PMQs in the House of Commons, 19 Oct 2022

The question from the Leader of the Opposition Sir Keir Starmer that prompted that defiant response which included her slamming her briefing book onto the despatch box for effect was asking her if she would last in Number 10 until Christmas.

I can’t imagine he’d have ever reckoned that she barely lasted 24 hours after a days of extraordinary chaos featuring sacked ministers, dramatic U-turns that reversed practically every policy decision she had made, and a vote on a Labour motion to ban fracking that was seen as a vote of confidence in the government with a three-line whip mandating party loyalty devolving into a division where there were accusations that MPs were being manhandled into the “NO” lobby by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Business Secretary.

With her resignation at 1330 British Summer Time outside the famous black door in Downing Street, she officially becomes the Prime Minister with the shortest time in office…a mere 45 days after she had been elected by the Conservative Party membership and kissed hands with Her Majesty the Queen on 05 Sep 2022 shortly before Her Majesty’s passing.

You’ve got to go back to 1827 to find the next two premiers on the list with the shortest tenure…George Canning who lasted 119 days before catching a rather dreadful case of death whilst in office and his successor The Viscount Goderich who was replaced after 144 days as a caretaker.

Liz’s downfall comes on the heels of the Tories finally chucking Boris Johnson overboard after his propensity for serial lying at the microphone and generally dreadful conduct whilst in office during the summer.

For those keeping score, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office is now going to have a fifth Prime Minister during his tenure in Downing Street and supposedly in a week’s time we will know which one of the MPs that helped bring Liz down will now get the keys to that most famous of political residences in central London.

The front-runners on offer don’t particularly inspire confidence that they can unite a Conservative and Unionist Party that is clearly in a vicious civil war that undoubtedly will usher in a Labour government at the next general election.

The chaos since Boris announced he had finally reached the end of the road in his premiership will be a case study of how not to govern with a series of self-inflicted mistakes that are breathtaking in their stupidity including:

• Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng announcing a mini-budget including massive tax cuts seen as dramatically favouring the rich that included scrapping the highest rate of tax of 45p and lifting the cap of tax on banker’s bonuses.
• Liz refused to put into place a scheme to freeze energy prices until after they’d already risen on the first of October and when she finally came round to that policy, she intended to pay for it using borrowed money which would be much more expensive to repay years down the road rather than imposing a windfall tax on the energy companies who were already profiting massively from price volatility and speculation.
• The financial markets reacted to the proposed mini-budget with horror that saw the value of the pound sterling dive to its lowest ever level against the dollar except when the pound was recalibrated in 1971 to be 100 pence rather than the 240 pence it was previously.
• Chancellor Kwarteng was recalled from a meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC and was promptly sacked and replaced with Jeremy Hunt who was very much a supporter of Truss’ opponent during the leadership contest…Rishi Sunak.
• The new Chancellor wastes no time scrapping pretty most of the proposals made in the mini-budget and signals that he was open to the idea of a windfall tax on energy companies and other tax rises which was a direct contradiction of the PM’s stated position. A stony-faced Liz Truss is sitting next to him as he’s making the statement on 17 Oct 2022 that makes it clear to anyone who knows British politics that she’s no longer got the authority in her own government.
• On Monday evening, the Prime Minister is interviewed by the BBC’s Chris Mason. Liz has never really done well in the interview or at the podium but this particular interview is arguably one of the most cringe-inducing ones she’s given so far. She actually looks like she’s been broken by the events of the weekend and is only going through the motions…badly. She needed an interview to save her premiership but this will have only emboldened her enemies on all fronts to sharpen their knives even more.
• The next day, an urgent question is tabled by Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer wishing to ask the Prime Minister why she had sacked Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor. The Leader of the House is deputised to answer in the PM’s place as she was supposedly unavailable due to an “urgent matter” (which was reportedly meeting with Sir Graham Brady who is the chair of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers except that Sir Graham was actually in the Commons chamber at the time). This leads to accusations from opposition MPs that the PM is hiding under a desk rather than facing the music. The PM eventually turns up a few minutes before the debate on the urgent question finishes but the Speaker refuses to ask the PM if she wishes to answer the question herself now that she’s arrived.
• Prior to PMQs on 19 Oct 2022, Suella Braverman of the more extreme right of the party resigns as Home Secretary after a rumoured 90-minute shouting match with the PM after having been sidelined by the PM and others over immigration policy which is generally in the portfolio of the Home Secretary. That makes her tenure in office 43 days which is the shortest time at the Home Office since World War II. Her resignation letter admits a technical violation of the ministerial code of sending an official document via personal EMAIL but the rest of the letter is a scathing rebuke of the Prime Minister’s government and policies. Her successor is Grant Shapps who was Transport Secretary before Liz Truss sacked him for his support of Rishi Sunak during the leadership contest.
• PMQs are a fiery affair with the Opposition mercilessly putting the PM to the sword about her massive amount of U-turns on policy and lack of authority. Ian Blackford of the Scottish Nationalist Party asks the PM if she supported protecting pensions against the high rate of inflation using the so-called “triple-lock mechanism” which Chancellor Hunt had indicated might not use the current highest level of increase (inflation at 10.1%) to increase benefits to pensioners. The PM declares her support for the “triple-lock” contradicting the Chancellor’s stated position (to his considerable surprise!).
• The Government initially treats a vote on a ban on fracking tabled by Labour as a vote of confidence in the Government and requires every Conservative member to vote against it in a three-line whip which if defied would result in the member being suspended from the party and having the whip removed which means they cannot stand for the party at the next election. The Chief Whip and Deputy Chief Whip are reported to have resigned over this before Downing Street clarifies that members may vote as they wish and that it wasn’t a confidence vote but only after MPs had already voted which enrages her backbenchers, some of whom were supposedly physically directed into the “NO” lobby.

With all of that going on these past couple of weeks, the chaos of last night were clearly a step too far for quite a bit of the parliamentary party and this morning’s meeting was a clear statement that it was game over for the Prime Minister.

Clearly, the 1922 Committee will not be going back to the members of the party in the country and will likely set the bar for being considered for being made leader so high that only one candidate will emerge to ask His Majesty for leave to form a new government. I’m sure the bookies have Liz’s opponent Rishi Sunak as the clear favourite to succeed Truss but I’d imagine Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt would likely be high on their odds sheets. There’s an outside chance Chancellor Hunt might go for the top job but as his appointment to the Exchequer was meant to calm the markets, I don’t think it likely he moves to Number 10 at this time.

And as farcical as it may sound, there are rumblings that Boris Johnson might well be returned to Number Ten. I wouldn’t lay long odds on that given how badly damaged goods he is but one cannot ignore the fact that he is excellent at campaigning which he showed with a dramatic increase in his governing majority in 2019.

Whoever ends up climbing the greasy pole to kiss hands with His Majesty the King is going to take over a party in a clear civil war with no real mandate or indeed ability to unite the party to avoid what is likely going to be a thumping Labour victory. Between their support of the most disastrous Brexit imaginable to the chaos and incompetence in handling the cost-of-living crisis and Liz Truss’ disastrous six weeks at Prime Minister, there’s really no conceivable way to imagine that the Tories won’t be in Opposition when the next General Election is called in 2024, if not sooner.